Cooling the Studio XPS 16

I take back what I said about this not getting as hot as my 1720. It most certainly runs hotters, especially under a medium to heavy load.

What steps have those of you with a 16 started taking to reduce your temperature? Anyone done any neat heatsink mods, replaced fans, found a program to control the fans, any of that?

Happy to hear any and all input, I love the Studio XPS 16 so far but it does get mighty toasty...and for the record, the warm touchpad area doesn't really bother me, but the underside does.

 

To begin with I think I'll grab a zalman nc2000...

 

do yurself a favor and get the nzxt cryo LX if u'r willin to shell out that amount of money.

what kind of screen option did u go with and how do u like yur SXPS16? i was considerin a 17" for my next laptop, but this RGB LED screen is really throwin a curve ball at me.

 

I have no problem heat problem at all with my SXPS16. I can't really feel the heat when I type. (CPU:T9550 HDD: normal 250gb, not SSD, RGB screen)

All I did was undervolting and grabbed a Zalman Nc2000 (very quiet, I have to get really close to hear the fan). Zalman NC2000 fits the SXPS16 perfectly, in my opinion.

On my normal use (browsing the internet, watch movie) the CPU temp is around 37-45 C. My max temp from stress test is around mid 60c which is a lot better than my old HP Pavillion dv6220tx (after undervolting & a cooler) which runs around 50-80c.

 

Undervolt it.
It shaved off almost 20C on my CPU's on maximum load.

 

I have no idea how to undervolt. Past putting in another hard drive or installing more ram, I'm clueless as to modifying a laptop.

To answer houstones: I have the WLED screen. And while I haven't seen the RGB LED screen I must say, the WLED screen is beautiful. Far better than my 1720's screen.

 

Well, that's why flipfire has this great guide in the hardware forum... http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=235824

But undervolting the new Intel processors usually only significantly drops your load temps; if the machine is hot at idle, undervolting is unlikely to change anything.

 

I didn't know the the ati card got as hot as it nvidia counter part.

 

Hey guys so what do u think is the best cooling mat for the SXPS16? I am looking for quietness, realibility, not too expensive and maybe an automatic temp on/off botton if that even exist.

 

i would have said the zalman nc2000 but its too small for the dell studio xps 16.

 

are you sure?

-----------Length----Width---Height
SXPS16----254-------384-----24 mm
NC2000----318-------400------42 mm

looks like it just fits perfectly. can anyone confirm me on this?

 

It dosent if you use HWmonitor you will see it reaches about 70c underload. The bottom of the laptop is metal witch makes it feel hotter then it is actually running

 

Zalman NC2000 fits my SXPS 16 perfectly...It is actually a lot bigger than my SXPS because of the 16:9 form factor. I pull the notebook around 1cm forward so that the air will hit all the vents under the notebook.

 

I was seriously considering, If I was to get the studio xps 16 for college, to get a 4yr warranty, claim I broke the bottom plate, and get a second bottom plate and let the dremel do the rest. almost all laptop coolers do nothing and even so do minimal to cool laptops due to ventilation problems. thus more vents!

 

the sxps16 has lots of vents in the bottom of the notebook, im using the 'cooler master X1' and although its a tad small for the notebook reduces the temps considerably, after heavy gaming 2hrs+ the max temp my CPU's reached was 67degrees.
The X1 has one big fan so is simular the the zalman 1000/2000

 

that is true for the majority of coolers on the market.

like i said from the get go. if u are lookin for a cooler that is really worth yur money AND actually performs, then the cryo LX is by far the best choice on the market.

 

i thought that the xps 16 had the footprint of a 17" laptop.

 

I made a graph and posted temps during the undervolt process and using the Zalman 2000 [Which is NOT too small, it leaves plenty of room around the laptop]. Lemme pull up the link.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=345445&page=324

 

So at what point was the sxps 16 stable with voltage? And can you do a comparison without the zalman going, or with it on low, or both? Thanks aaron!

 

It depends on your CPU. Even two exact same CPUs can be stable at a different voltage.

My SXPS can go lower than the one in Luke's graph

 

Luke = Aaron? lol

I could have gone lower with my voltage but I wanted to leave a nice buffer between the too low and just right.

 

So undervolting works very well huh? I will have to give it a go...

 

haha I scrolled up a bit too high. Sorry about that

I've noticed you have a SSD 256, I'm wondering why is your notebook is hotter than mine.
So does the SSD really help in temp?

My notebook never go up higher than 70c in the stress test. Or maybe because I'm in Canada and where I live is simply like a fridge.

 

My machine is hot when loaded but I thought its just normal to do that considering the processor and graphic card that's in it.
I don't have the zalman nc2000 (in fact I've never seen laptop after market coolers) but I'll consider it.

The laptop doesn't get hot when using just for minimal work for the first hour or so (browsing/document handling). After that its kinda warm. I start sweating around the area I've kept the machine.

I did hear of undervolting last night so I'll give it a try. I've only read a bit of, what looks like a brilliant tutorial so I'll finish that up and then try it out

 

Just read the undervolting tutorial and be done with it.

 

As soon as I have some time that I can take away from work, family, and the holiday weekend, I'll be sure to.

However in the mean time, feel free to not be an !@$%. Thanks for your advice on undervolting but I don't need you ordering me around.

In other news, glad to see all the contributions to this thread...keep it up guys. I will let you know how the zalman nc2000 works for me.

 

My apologies, Narthecium, I didn't mean to sound like an a**, but you're right - I did sound a bit like it.

What I should have said was - once you undervolt it and (hopefully) have success doing it, you'll look back at this thread and wonder what took you so long

What kind of CPU do you have, MHz? I think the higher clocked ones will benefit the most from undervolting.

 

No problem dude.

The CPU is a 2.53ghz, I think that'd make it the P8700...the laptop on a whole does run pretty hot. I'll have to give the undervolting a shot some time this week...combine that with the NC2000 I ordered and I should be good to go.

 

I've been following this thread a little bit, especially as my 2.66GHz gets pretty hot, especially on the front bezel (where the wireless icons are) and underneath. My one question and it may be stupid, but is there a downside to undervolting? Does it reduce the performance? Thanks!

 

If done properly, no there is absolutely no downside to undervolting. All it does is reduce the amount of voltage which goes to your CPU. Te CPU itself should be smart enough to know when it's not getting enough juice and therefore it would crash. So really, as long as you do stability tests to make sure your voltages are safe, there is no downside.

The only "downside" I can think of is that doing a proper undervolting takes a long long time(considering the guide asks you to stress test for 45min between each new voltage mutiplier and there are 12 of them with probably 10 different options each).

 

Glad to see a XPS Studio 16 thread

I have the "base" model, nothing fancy added to it.
With default settings, my temps didn't even struggle to reach high 70's, even up to ~82 C after about an hour of gameplay. After undervolting, however, the max temps I ever see now are in the very low 60's, with the max I've seen being 61 C for the CPU.

I didn't want to post my undervolting values because of the fact that every CPU is different, but I was able to undervolt all multipliers to the lowest setting available, 0.9250V.

Undervolting is great; at no cost, I shaved off about 20 C. Now the next step is finding a cooler that agrees with the fan positions for this beast.

 

Anybody wanna tell me what their undervolting values were if they have the P8600?

 

I just swapped out my P8600 for a P9600 I picked up for a good deal. I'll be selling the P8600 and shouldn't lose much cash in the changeover.

I replaced the thermal pads on the ATI and CPU; with some well applied Arctic Silver thermal paste.

I then ran a few stress tests, full prime load (for an hour) the CPU was happy at 65-70c. I ran a Furmark concurrently, and the GPU also maintained a similar temperature. This is warm, but it's well within safe operating limits of the chips, and I'm sure is a bit better than the thermals before I did the chip swap.

If you're comfortable doing this kind of work on your laptop, I'd recommend it. Dell just uses stick-on thermal pads, which are way too thick and limit the dissipation of heat from the processors to the heatsink.

 

I bought a Cyro LX and problem solved, without all the hassle of undervolting

 

Running into similar heat issues with the Studio XPS 16.

My cores have hit 95C and 96C and the TZ00 temp point has hit a whopping 105C (I have the 2.66GHZ processory and ATI Radeon HD 3670 256mb, 4GB RAM)

I'm currently working on underclocking but I'll probably also pick up a cooling pad now.

Anyone LISTENED to both the Cryo LX and the Zalman nc2000? I'll probably go for the quieter one because they seem relatively equal in reported performances.

 

I updated it. I was freaking surprised myself. I'm just reporting what the hardware monitor is showing.

 

My XPS16: P8400 (2.26 GHz), Ati Radeon HD 3670, 7200RPM HD

When I first started using my system I was getting idle cpu temp of close to 50C and load temps of around 70-80. That was way too high, especially since I purposely chose the slowest CPU available for the XPS16 to have a cooler system!

What I did:

1.) New Bios

The new bios A07 lowered temps. I remember reading that the update should have bumped up the temperature thresholds for when the fan kicks in with higher RPMs, so that did help, but it didn't do anything too significant.

2.) Undervolting

I then undervolted the CPU to:

SuperLFM 8.0x* (0.8750V)
Normal 6.0x (0.8875V)
Normal 7.0x (0.9000V)
Normal 8.0x (0.9375V)

*I increased the SuperLFM multiplier to 8.0x since that increased the idle clocks to around 1130 MHz, and with a target CPU usage level of 65% my system was spending more time on the SuperLFM mode, which works at half FSB, i.e. low idle temps.

The undervolting was great, I noticed significantly lower temps. My CPU was now idling at around 40-45C and under load it reached around 60-65C.

3.) Zalman NC2000

The undervolting did lower system temps, but with the 7200 RPM HD, it did nothing to cool down the palm rest. That really annoyed me as a lefty! I then bought the Zalman cooler and I have been very happy with it. It really does make the computer more comfortable to use, since it delivers airflow towards the bottom of the palmrest/touchpad area. It also lowered my CPU idle temperature to around 30-35C and load to 50-55 so I'm absolutely pleased with the results. On top of that my XPS is much more quiet than it was out of the box, since even under load the laptop fan does not blow full blast!

Hope this helps you guys!

 

Here's my current settings. When I set the undervolt to 1V for the #10 multiplier my system crashed (using the auto adjust other voltages).

Here's my current info, it still seems to be running REALLY hot.

And I am running the Bios #9 that just came out.

 

Quick question how do I undervolt? what software do I use? BTW im a lil bit in the wrong forum but its still almost the same thing ( I have xps 1340 Intel core 2 du0 P8600 processor which I overclocked to 2.7 stable mzh ) Now Im very interested in undervolting but I dont want to lose my overclocking speeds....
Can any help me out?
Thanx

 

bingo.......

 

There's a guide in the Hardware section.